Playwright and right-wing politician István Csurka dies at 77

Born in Budapest in 1934, István Csurka was a writer active from the 1960s, as well as a politician with extreme rightist views, the founder of a radical nationalist party and a right-wing magazine.

A new volume by János Pilinszky in English: Passio

A volume of fourteen poems by János Pilinszky, translated by Clive Wilmer and George Gömöri, has been published by English poetry publisher Worple Press.

Games of survival

They acted out well-known dramas or invented new ones, reflecting the cultural pursuits of their community. “Good morning, Ophelia,” the ghetto children no longer allowed to attend school greeted each other in the morning, or “Good morning, Tristan,” or “Good morning, Rigoletto!”

Praise for Imre Kertész’s Fiasco

As 2011 drew to a close, magazines and websites put together a list of the best books they reviewed last year. Kertész’s Fiasco, published in English by Melville House, figures at the top of some of these lists.

A blog on János Kodolányi’s novel I Am He

Why and how could Yehudah have committed the sin which has for ever been linked to his name in the unforgiving consciousness of mankind? Kodolányi traces the events from the viewpoint of the traitor.

Péter Nádas's Parallel Stories in English

First critical reactions

Péter Nádas’s monumental novel, Parallel Stories, has come out in English translation. Hailed by the publisher as a “once-in-a-generation literary event”, this 1200-page-long novel is a narrative with a multitude of stories and characters, ranging from Nazi Germany to Communist Hungary.

Vilmos Kondor’s murder mystery to be published in the US

A Hungarian writer’s answer to Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammett, Budapest Noir is a hard-boiled murder mystery with Hungarian characters, taking place in the Budapest of the 1930s.

Péter Nádas among Nobel nominees?

Péter Nádas may be among this year’s nominees for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Although the list of the nominees is never disclosed, speculations are rife in the literary world. Ladbrokes, a betting and gaming website, sets the odds at 10:1 for Nádas, which makes him third on the list after Adonis and Tomas Tranströmer.

Poet-translator János Csokits dies

János Csokits had a major part in acquainting the English-speaking world with János Pilinszky’s poetry. Since he believed that only a great poet could translate poetry into another language, he convinced Ted Hughes to translate Pilinszky.

Hungarian fiction special feature in the July issue of Asymptote Journal

Asymptote, an international journal dedicated to literary translation, has published a section on Hungarian fiction in its July 2011 issue, complete with translators’ notes as well as written versions and audio recordings of some of the Hungarian originals.